set your tears aside
by Yui Miyamoto
Summary: Is this finally the day that Soubi can no longer keep Ritsuka as he is?


**fandom: Loveless**  
 **title: set your tears aside.**  
 **pairing: Soubi x Ritsuka**  
 **rating: pg-13**  
 **Description – Is this finally the day that Soubi can no longer keep Ritsuka as he is?**

 **Disclaimer – Loveless doesn't belong to me.**

 **set your tears aside.**  
 **By miyamoto yui**

 _  
/I watched whole sakuras fall to the ground as if their lightness was too delicate for the branch. Then, the bell rang._

I rushed home as soon as classes ended. Everyday, like the day before and the one after it, I hoped that my mother would be there to be greet me when I entered the threshold, no matter how…

But today, as I opened the door and pushed my hand onto the wall to take off my shoes at the genkan, there was no response. I blinked my eyes and shrugged my shoulders as I slowly put my shoes to point towards the door with a soft click.  
As I stepped into the hall saying, "Tadaima", I found my mother suddenly standing between me and the dining room. Her eyes gazed upon me menacingly and my heart instantly quivered that I held my breath. I gulped.

No matter how many times I had seen those irritated, angry eyes and those thin, pressed lips, I still shivered from inside out.

"Today is Seimei's birthday, but why are YOU here?"

Today, I had a present for you because it was YOUR birthday. I really wanted to say that to her.  
But I let her lock me in my room. As I jumped out as the sun was setting, I looked back at the closed white door where no one would pound on it from the outside./

"She no longer needs me," my reflection tells me.

As I hold onto the railing of the Express orange train, I hold onto to the small pouch I had for her, a gift not ever meant to be given.  
But my hand feels more of the wind and the earth than it should. It is time to go.

They will come for me soon.

My eyes quickly try to capture moments of the nameless buildings that cut into the sun. The clouds make the temperature drop within minutes at a time.

How many must be at war for stupidity? You think that you don't have enough freedom, but you can choose to live or to die at anytime of the day.  
The day drips into night as the rain begins to form above our heads. I look up and I know that when the rain comes, I will be able to cry with the world again.

For that one moment, I long for it all the time.  
In that instant, I am not alone.

The most important thing that I fear is that I'm left behind when his pensive, wistful eyes will tell me, "You're too strong for me now."

But I won't let you.

Going through the train stations on hyperspeed, my mind tries to slow down the images set before me: river, green, wide bike lanes, houses, business buildings, universities, tunnels, driving schools, great intersection. I know them very well though they do not know I do.  
I know that I'll never see this scene again and it's not guaranteed that I'll see it when I come back the same way again.

Still, I fear if I'll get to my destination once I've left my home alone.

You think that I'm too dramatic, but my dearest one, you're just apathetic.

As I grip onto the train, it's no an easy thing, I'm balancing all the things on my body, with two hands and within my mind. Keeping this act of tranquility like a lake with an earthquake happening underneath.

There is someone very far away from me sitting down, but I can see this young man so clearly looking at me.

Is it because of how I dress? Is it because of my expression on the train window that I no longer keep track of? Have I become more and more of a cocoon inside the shell of my body, keeping my mouth shut only until I'm spoken to?  
What is so unusual when you do the same things behind closed doors? Maybe much worse than these little, petty intricacies?

It's not crowded on the train but I want to get away as much as possible. I want to get to where I'm going. I want to finish whatever I need to do. Today, I have decided it as so.  
I want to meet more interesting people. I want to talk of things beyond brother, mother, destiny, and Soubi. I need these things, but teach me something I don't know.

I don't want to be alone in myself anymore~!

Setting my tears aside, I stare out as the song rises inside my ears, taking over my whole being. Tell me what I should do. Tell me what I should feel.

Tell me the answer of what I'm supposed to reveal.

When I get to the place full of water and warehouses, I stand with the wind coldly going through me and then I run down the staircase to get out of the station. I'm fighting a war inside myself though my face tells nothing of all my inner worries and the lies my smiles surface into the light.

This blurry day with the clouds almost so low I can touch them if they keep descending to the Earth. Another day is sure to come after this, but today is flowering into crystals whose leaves will remain in glass cases within my head.  
Where are all the people now?

Another train goes by above me while I'm on the ground walking with my hands in fists. I wonder about all those people who just go from stop to stop not knowing how close everything really is.  
Every station is a person that reaches out to you somehow, but you overestimate the distance between you. Is it really as far as you think?

I don't want to be like them.  
I want to feel how hard it is to go across even if I don't make it alive. My heart beats up and down, in and out.

The wait until 'never' starts now. I don't want to wait for someone to save me anymore, for why do I deserve such a thing? I didn't do anything significant for this world yet.

That's why my life is so worthless.

It's not the need that society dictates, "Accomplish something!" It's my soul seeing everything around me, pretending not to do anything when I am aware of what is going on.

Yes, of when I know now that I can do something with my own two hands.

The instrumental I've been waiting for finally comes on. I won't say these words because they're weak. I start to quietly sing,

 **My world ripped and turned**  
 **Inside out by invisible hands.**

 **Will I die here?**  
 **Why the signs so strong?**  
 **I wanted to tell you,**

 **"I will be with you**  
 **until I die."**

 **The Earth will**  
 **outlive me**  
 **even if I stayed forever**  
 **and you wouldn't**

 **know a thing.**

 **I cried and you don't care**  
 **if you hurt me.**

 **I waited for him in a dream**  
 **but I knew**

 **It was useless.**

 **I had no faith**  
 **in other people**  
 **to be selfless towards me.**

 **Stopping yourself**  
 **(I too am human.)**  
 **I couldn't sing.**  
 **(At least you have a voice.)**  
 **I wanted it for you.**  
 **(There is a whole world.)**  
 **My wings hurt.**  
 **Torn from the inside,**  
 **I cannot fly back.**

There are only key words I can say and even if you stop me, they'll come out eventually. This is life. This is nature.

These words are a melody that only I can sing for you, beyond myself.

Killing myself, I can save you.

When I cross over there, I'll no longer be yours.

I rush on as I turned back a second seeing you from the station going after me. Though there are a few others coming after you, you shout from the top of the dark portal, "NO!"

When the wind blows, it must go where it goes. You cannot stop what must be, just prolong the eventual.  
You can no longer stop me.

I make it to the base of the enormous white bridge. I run quickly to the elevator.  
"I am no longer a child," I say to you as you reach out your hand and I touch the cold, cold surface. Rising higher and higher inside the glass, steel-door elevator etched with the impression of "Rain", you watch me from the cement ground and then run inside after me.

I put the volume up on the md player you gave me for my birthday.

When the doors open up, I climb up on the ladder of the gorgeous pearl white bridge. I whisper the words and then I sing as loud as when I talk,

 **And the heart**  
 **That bleeds**  
 **Before me**

 **Is my own**

 **Because I can't allow**  
 **Another to feel**  
 **As I do.**

Louder and louder, my voice becomes stronger as I reach the top, swaying and swaying, watching the water below me and you gripping onto the ladder below.

 **In the end,  
I could not love myself.**

 **I could only care beyond it:**  
 **You.**

I will give you that perfect partnership. You can feel all you want but you don't have to accept the affection. I can shout all I want, the opposite of how I feel so that I'll keep the pride I have left.

"RITSUKA! RITSUKA!" you shout until your throat runs dry from all your dormant emotions pulled out forcefully one by one. I look down and shake my hand and close my smiling eyes.

 **Set your tears aside for another day,  
Drowning inside myself  
I'm already surrounded  
By your feelings.**

"RRIIIIIIIITTTTTTSUUUUUUUUUKKKKKKKKKKKKK

KAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!  
DON'T LEAVE ME BEHIND!"

Your voice thunders into the blur of my pulsating heart getting slower and slower…

The chains break effortlessly.

 ***/*/*/***

The almost-transparently blond haired man presses his palms to his eyes as his mouth opens into a soundless cry. Tears fall from the sides of his face and then he turns over in the bed at the pale-skinned, naked body before him with the white sheet hanging over the boy's hips. The boy's hands are under his right cheek as if in prayer. Calmly, he breathes, but his eyes make a trail on the bed.

Were they having the same dream?  
Is it warning of the future?

A soft purr into the air, Ritsuka mumbles, "In the end, I am my own soldier, Soubi."

Were these the kinds of things that Ritsuka dreamed of but forgot when he woke up? Was that why he guarded himself so well?

But ultimately, did this union of soul mean the separation of flesh?

All Soubi could do was touch the ears that easily came off that Ritsuka didn't stir at all. And the older man's eyes squinted, turning red in split-seconds,

crying despairingly, inhumanely inside.

The clock ticked mechanically inside the room without mercy.  
The time for suicide had come. It was like an intravenous drip, blood flowing faster when there was no more to be used.  
Yes, when it was no longer needed…

…when the will was no longer enough to keep you alive.

"Time for sacrifice," he heard his Seimei's voice again as if he were standing over his bedside.

For once, Soubi felt true fear, at the extent of Ritsuka's courageousness.

"I tried. Is this how far I can go?" Holding the ears in his left hand, Soubi comes closer to Ritsuka's face, tasting the boy's tears with his tongue. His heart beat so fast he could not embrace Ritsuka because he didn't want his precious one to feel something he thought was once dead, revealing everything,

with the potential to ruin everything that must be.

 **Owari.**

4/13/2008 9:55 AM – LA  
4/14/08 1:55 AM - Tokyo


End file.
